I'm a Debian proselyte since it is my first Debian installation.
Debian lovers are the same kind of people as Macintosh lovers or
Linux lovers in the operating systems space. Nothing else
counts. Since I'm already a Mac and Linux lover (and French too :-)
it was time to fall in love.

Debian is well, clearly and internationally documented. Thanks to
all those people who bred this really open distribution.

I could leave you on your own during the installation process. But
since we have to interact with a shell during it, the entire process
will be described in detail.

I know the description is Debian specific. I prefer to give you a
complete example than nothing except a ``run a shell at the right
moment and type bla bla...''. I do like concrete examples.

Simon Forget <sforget@camelot.ca> told me he could not use
this howto with his Toshiba Libretto 50CT because the kernel could
not recognize the pcmcia floppy drive during the installation
process. I don't know why but there is a solution using plip, if you
already have a dos partition on the target computer.

This solution is simpler and faster because no floppy drive nor plip
network is necessary during the installation process. If you are
interested in this solution, go directly to the section
Installing from a DOS partition. I'm keeping the old installation routine because this
new one needs a DOS partition that becomes superfluous when you
definitely want to leave the dark side.

If you have several disks choose the good one (where you want to
install Linux) and press <ENTER>

You are now using the program cfdisk. Using
cfdisk is safe until you decide to [Write] the
partition on disk. Leaving cfdisk with [Quit] is
safe.

We are going to make just two new primary partitions, a Swap one and
a big Linux one. If you want to create more partitions, leave some
free space or extended partitions, you can. But read the
documentation about "Partitioning" in the
Installation-HOWTO, especially if you have more than 1024
cylinders and an old version of LILO.

If you previously ran the FIPS program, you see the
hda1 partition (DOSFAT16). Switch to the next free
partition with the up/down arrow keys.

Select [New] with the right/left arrow keys and press
<ENTER>

Select [Primary] and press <ENTER>

Enter the size of your swap partition. Twice the RAM is usual if you
have less than 128 megabytes of ram. If you have 2 gigabytes of
RAM, it's because you don't want to swap. In that case, no swap
partition is needed.

Switch to the next free partition with the up/down arrow
keys. Select [New] and press <ENTER>

Select [Primary] and press <ENTER>

Enter the size in MB (you can leave the default) and press
<ENTER> Its type should be already Linux. If not,
change to Linux (83) with [Type]

The partition table is defined now. Verify everything looks good. If
you're not sure, read the documentation with [Help]. If
doubts are still there, select [Quit] and leave the
installation process. Go for a walk and restart from the beginning
of this section.

I assume you are confident now.

Select [Write]

Are you sure you want to write the partition table to disk?

Type "yes" and press <ENTER>

Select [Quit] and press <ENTER>

Next: Initialize and Activate a Swap Partition

Press <ENTER>

Please select the partition to initialize as a swap device

Select /dev/hda2 (normally already selected).
Press <ENTER>

Scan for Bad Blocks?

select <YES> and press <ENTER>

Are you Sure?

select <YES> and press <ENTER>

Initializing swap partition
...

Next: Initialize a Linux Partition

Press <ENTER>

Select Partition. Please select the partition to initialize as a
Linux "ext2" file-system.

Select /dev/hda3 (normally already selected) and press
<ENTER>.

Scan for Bad Blocks?

Select <YES> and press <ENTER>

Are you Sure?

Select <YES> and press <ENTER>

A new page full of numbers. You can take a rest because it takes
some time (especially with a big hard disk).

Next: Mount a Previously-Initialized Partition

Press <ENTER>

Please select the partition to mount

Select /dev/hda3 and press <ENTER>

Mount the /dev/hda3 device as the Root FileSystem?

Select <Yes< and press <ENTER>

Next: Install Operating System Kernel and Modules

Press <ENTER>

Please select the medium you will use to install the system

Select /dev/fd0 and press <ENTER>

Please place the Rescue Floppy in the first floppy drive

The floppy is already there.
Select <Continue> and press <ENTER>

Installing the Rescue Floppy ...
Please place the Drivers Floppy in the first floppy drive

Eject the Rescue Floppy and insert the Drivers Floppy, the one I
you labelled drv1440.bin (you did it, didn't you?).
Select <Continue> and press <ENTER>

Installing the Drivers Floppy ...

A new screen:

Next: Configure Device Driver Modules

Press <ENTER>

Select Category

Read the text.

Please select the category of modules

Select net and press <ENTER>
Select plip.

Module plip

Select "Install the module in the kernel" and press <ENTER>
No parameters are needed.
Select <Ok> and press <ENTER>

Installation succeeded
Please press ENTER when you are ready to continue.

Press <ENTER>

Select Exit ("Finished with these modules") and press
<ENTER> Then you see the same kind of
screen again. Select Exit ("Finished with these
modules") and press <ENTER>

Next: Configure the Network

Choose a name, you can use a different name than debian or
target. Press <ENTER>